


The Messenger's Shot

by Hedgi



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Episode Reaction, Gen, The Speedfarce is full of lies and cruelty, Yelling at bullshit cosmic entities for fun and profit, and a rant, and if the writers won't call it out I will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-08 17:11:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14110137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hedgi/pseuds/Hedgi
Summary: Iris gained more than just Barry's Speed when she had his powers. She also gained his connection to the Speedforce. Now, at last, she can give the thing that has tormented her family without consequence for years a piece of her mind.





	The Messenger's Shot

Iris had Known, of course, how fast a speedster’s brain processed things. Barry watching several months worth of television in  the time it would take her to get to the first commercial break was proof enough of that. Still, it was a little unnerving, to go through a twelve car train of thought and realize only a second or two had passed.

One thing stuck out to her, one of the things Caitlin had said. She had Barry’s Speed, and everything that came with it. The dull ache of hunger that a gallon of mint chocolate chip ice cream had fixed  made that abundantly clear. But the metabolism didn’t really interest her, and while the Speed, the lightning that sang in her veins, was amazing, that wasn’t what her brain fixated on.

 _His connection to the Speedforce_. Caitlin had said. Iris knew about the Speedforce, more than she’d wanted to. Wally hadn’t wanted to talk about his time as it’s captive, but he’d let things slip, a little at a time. Jay Garrick had done the same, and Barry told her some of what had happened when he’d been trapped there before the fight with Zoom, when he’d gone to save Wally. Late night conversations where he’d confessed the guilt that clung to his bones. And then they’d all seen the Speedforce claim him, wearing Nora Allen’s face. The cruelty of it all had galled Iris for the six months before they’d finally saved Barry. Who he’d been when he’d come out had terrified her, having him back but seeing him so shattered, so far from home had hurt.

So now, with her mind roiling at a thousand thoughts a second, she thought of the Lightning and the holes in reality that had claimed Wally, claimed Barry, and brought her family so much pain. She slipped out of bed, replacing the covers in the fraction of a heartbeat, and zipped out into the clean night air, clutching her phone. She didn’t want to wake Barry, and this wouldn’t take long.

She hoped.

Cisco answered his phone on the second ring, clearly not asleep either. “Iris? Something wrong?”

“I need your help. Meet me at STAR.”

~ ~ ~

“Let me get this straight.” Cisco folded his arms, then decided that looking tough was not as important as pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off the impending headache. “You want me to vibe you into the Speedforce… so you can yell at it?”

Iris nodded. “Please?”

“You realize this is a terrible plan, right? Like, not the worst plan anyone in this building has ever had  but frankly that’s because your husband has the common sense and self preservation instincts of a sunfish

“–and Harry is a world class idiot.” Iris finished, remembering the many times his solution to problems had been to turn the particle accelerator back on and risk destroying the city again. Honestly, why hadn’t they just filled the damn thing with concrete, at this point? _That’s an issue for another day_ , she told herself.

“That’s putting it politely,” Cisco agreed. “No, but– god, Iris, do you hear yourself? You want to yell at cosmic entities that could kill us all. This is a terrible idea.”

“Does that mean you won’t?” Iris asked. “ I’m not going to make you, but–”

“I didn’t say that,” Cisco said, going to his desk and rummaging around. “Mostly because I know you’ll find some way, and… I have a thing or two to say to it, too. Ok, look, just don’t let go of me, ok? If you get lost, or stuck, or something, and you’ve pissed it off….”

“Got it,” Iris said, feeling the urge to fidget, let the lighting run through her fingertips. She kept them still.

“If you’re sure, then… let’s go.” Cisco held out a gauntleted hand. Iris took it, and the bright white and chrome of the Cortex was gone. She could feel Cisco’s hand in hers, another hand on her shoulder, but when she turned to look, there was only empty air. She swallowed, hard. STAR Labs was gone, but this wasn’t the void she’d seen before, the swirling storm of energy that had torn at her skin and hair when she’d tried to bring Barry home. Instead, it was a familiar enough space that she hadn’t set foot in for months. She’d only been in Central City Picture News a handful of times when it was this dark, but she new it. Her old desk, the watercooler, the file cabinets, the windows letting in the orange streetlamp light. She paused in her scan of the deserted room when she saw that it was not deserted, after all. A figure stood, back to her, blonde hair catching in the light. Over a shoulder blade was a dark patch, blood from a wound, staining the white shirt. Her heart stuttered, and he turned. She saw the weathered skin, the cocky smirk.

“Mason,” she said, the name of a dead man escaping her lips before she could remind herself that this was not really CCPN, and that wasn’t Mason Bridge, staring her down.

“Hello, Iris West,” he–it–said, in a tone of disdain she hadn’t heard in years. “You should not be here.”

“West-Allen,” she corrected automatically, clenching the fist that was not holding cisco’s hand. All the same, she felt the grip shift, holding her wrist, instead. It was ghostlike, but still there. In the grip, she could feel the not-wind of the void. “You’re not Mason. I should have known you’d pull this.”

“I must wear someone’s face,” the Speedforce said with a shrug. “ This one is fitting. Why have you come here, Temporary Speedster?  You may have his Speed, but  it is not meant to be yours. This is no place for you. You are no Flash.”

“No, I’m not,” Iris said sharply. “Thank god for that. I’m the messenger, and I have a message for you.”

“Oh?” she could sense amusement in the thing before her, like a cat watching a bug skitter closer. She stepped closer, tugging Cisco along.

“Yeah. How. Dare. You. How  _dare_  you do what you’ve done and call yourself anything but a villain?”

“We keep the balance–”

“Bullshit,” Cisco’s voice echoed in her ear, and Iris repeated it. “No, you don’t. You torture good people for the fun of it, and let bad people do whatever they want.”

“The Flash took the timeline and re-wove it to suit himself. We could not allow it. He pays the cost for the damage–”

“No. Barry fixed what you let Eobard Thawne break in the first place. You think we don’t know about that? That there was something else first? That maybe we were happy, there? That we were doing good, that–” she stopped. “ You didn’t stop Thawne. You let him kill Mason. And Simon Stagg, and Tony Woodward, and Cisco–”

“We prevented that–”

“No, Barry did. By time traveling on the anniversary of a murder you let one of your speedsters commit. You never yelled at Barry for that, or for saving us all from Savage,  but suddenly when he tries to fix your mistake–”

“You cannot comprehend the damage he caused,” Not- Mason snapped. “Nor do you know anything about what we did to Thawne.”

“I know you let him live even after Eddie died. You let him hurt even more people, screw up the past even more, and you didn’t do a damn thing to stop him. And even if–IF–that were true, it doesn’t excuse the other shit you’ve pulled.”

She closed the gap between them, the pressure on her wrist tightening. “What you did to them while they were here, to my family. How can you possibly justify that?”

“You speak of Garrick, who should have known better than to interfere in another world, and your brother, who released my prisoner. The prison needed to be filled. He should not have tried to do what only Bartholomew could.” The Speedforce spoke to her like a tutor to a stubborn child who refused to believe that two and two made five.

“It didn’t have to be a prison,” Iris whispered, thinking of Wally and the way he’d stared at nothing, a hand wrapped around his wrist for hours after the rescue. “You gave Wally that speed, you gave Barry that speed, and you never told them the rules. You never said Wally couldn’t try to save my life, and then when he did, you locked him in the worst hell you could think of, and this proves you didn’t have to. You may have needed a speedster, but you didn’t have to torture him! How is that fair? How is that Balance? And then on top of that, you have the nerve to lie to us. You wear Nora’s face, Mason’s, you used Eddie and Ronnie and that asshole Snart To hurt Barry. No other reason, and you know it. We all know it. You used their faces to lie to him, for what? What were you going to do, keep him in your prison then, leave me to die, fuck up your timeline even more?”

“We do not lie.” A ripple went through the world, Mason’s face shifted to her father’s.

“Go back to Mason,” Iris snapped. “You don’t get to pull this on me.”

“This is not your world, Messenger,” it said in Joe’s “I’m not mad, just disappointed” voice. Iris found it hard not to wince at it out of habit. “Leave, while you still can. It is not your place to understand things as they are. Bartholomew needed to understand the consequences of his actions. His future actions, his past,the deaths that result because of him that he will not stop. The way he has hurt others.There must be balance and responsibility.”

“For Barry. Not for Eobard, not for Zoom.” Iirs scoffed. “Yeah, Barry–hurt people. Not on purpose, and then he hurt people more clinging to your shitty half explained rules , but he did— but you don’t get to pin everything on him.” She reached up with a free hand. There was the chain she always wore, two thin rings warm against her skin. “I don’t know how Snart died, but whatever it was wasn’t Barry’s doing. Barry didn’t turn him into a hero, the last time we saw that bastard he threatened to murder me in my own living room.”

The Speedforce merely watched her, blank faced.  

“You used Ronnie, too. Barry told me what you showed him, but that wasn’t Barry’s fault. Barry didn’t force Firestorm to do anything.”

“If not for Bartholomew, there would have been nothing for Firestorm to stop. He should have–”  
  


“Barry didn’t cause the wormhole,” Csco’s voice echoed, and then stopped echoing as he flicKered into view. He too, glared at the Speedforce. “ The timeloop was stable. He didn’t stop Thawne. The wormhole was–” he looked at Iris, and she saw the apology on his face. “It was Eddie. And even if it had been Barry, you’re still wrong. Still lying. Ronnie’s sacrifice was nothing to do with Barry..”

“I was there,” the Speedforce said. “In the Flash, in the hole between worlds. I–”

“No. you were there in June.” Cisco corrected, and Iris saw the blank mask drop into confusion. “But that’s not when Ronnie made his sacrifice. He made that in december, 2013, and he’d never heard Barry Allen’s name. The Flash didn’t exist yet. You were still just a cloud without lighting. He didn’t do what he did for Barry. Ronnie Raymond didn’t die for Barry, for the Flash. He made his choice for Central city. For Caitlin. For  _me_.”

Iris nodded. “And Eddie was a hero,” she said, still seeing the blond hair, the bloodstained white shirt, the feeling of a fading heartbeat under fingers that itched with lighting. She fought to keep her voice steady “But he didn’t die for Barry, either. He did what he did for all of us. For my Dad, and Cisco, for an innocent man in prison for a decade and a half because of you, for Barry and for me. You had no right to use his face to hurt Barry. You had no right to use my mom to hurt Wally, or whatever you made Jay see, you have no right to Nora’s face, or–or to mine. You give people gifts and tell them–long after the fact– to be heroes, well,  they aren’t the only ones allowed to sacrifice to stop  the monsters  _you_  make. You don’t get to blame your victims  when their friends try to help them and still pretend you’re not a liar, pretend you’re a neutral entity that just wants to keep everything balanced.”

Cisco swiped at a bleeding nose, keeping one hand locked around Iris’s wrist. The room flickered–or, no, Iris realized.  _They_  were flickering.

“You will die if you stay here longer, Vibe,” the Speedforce said, but it didn’t sound like a threat. More like a warning from someone who knew they were meant to be concerned, but hadn’t figured out how to be, exactly.

Iris shifted her hand, and squeezed Cisco’s fingers. She wanted to drag the Speedforce out and into her world, wanted to rub its face in the bloodstains it had caused, but what was the point of that? She had said her piece. Cisco understood, and  took a breath.

“We know your tricks.  Cut it out. If you really want to be balanced, to keep everything from going to hell,  if you want to tell us something, just do. No more making shit up for the fun of it. No more lying to punish us for breaking a rule you never told anyone about– or at all, thanks.. I’m not a speedster, I don’t answer to you.”

He twitched a hand, like he was plucking at a guitar string, and Iris felt the world ripple around them again. She had to close her eyes against the sudden brightness of the cortex.

They were back, and she could still feel the electricity in her veins. A win, then. She had delivered her message. She just hoped the Speedforce would listen.


End file.
